In my essay, I am going to argue for Descartes mind-body dualism against Darwin’s monism. I believe that the mind and body are two separate entities and that human life is not simply the result random mutations that took place throughout the past two billion years or so. I am not going to attempt to disprove science; I can’t do that. I am however, going to try to give specific examples on the origin of existence and the nature of reality.

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Rene Descartes believed that the mind and body are separate; that the senses could not always be trusted, but that because we as humans are able to think about our existence, we possess some sort of entity separate than our fleshly body. I believe this separate entity to be a soul”an immaterial and eternal substance every human possesses. ” Yet before I can talk about souls, I need to talk about God. I believe that, like Aquinas says, we were “put in motion” by a first mover; I believe this to be God, an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, perfect, eternal, and loving (the list goes on . . . ) being.

I believe that He created man to have a soul that could be in perfect relation with Him. Many of you may say you don’t believe in God, but you have some sort of idea about what He might be like if He did exist. Yet, how could we imagine something greater than ourselves unless it exists in some form? How could we have created a thought about God if He wasn’t there in the first place? Descartes claims that he is a “thinking thing. ” He also claims that thinking is a characteristic of the mind, or soul. We humans are thinking things. Like Descartes says, we “doub[t], understan[d], conveiv[e], affir[m], den[y], wil[l], refus[e]; [we] imagin[e]. . and perceiv[e]. ” I think these characteristics of thought and our perception—our awareness—are the things that distinguish us from the rest of creation. Our minds do not follow the mechanism of pure biology- we have the ability to sense something and then interpret it in our own. We are capable of choosing to go with or against our evolutionary hardware. If we did not have a mind/soul, then that would not be possible and sitting here and discussing the nature of our existence would be absolutely pointless. Machines have no reason why to ponder their purpose of their existence— it is ingrained in them.

I highly doubt that when you starting thinking concrete thoughts that you knew exactly why you were here on this earth; that required some higher level of thought. The fact that we are here now thinking and talking about life and souls helps affirms the existence of a higher level of thinking; something that biology and Darwin fail to explain. According to Darwin, man is a product of a mindless, chance algorithmic process. He believed that humans and nature evolved through a process of chance mutations that have thus far resulted in us and the rest of the natural world.

He believes there is no soul, that humans are tantamount to nature, and that the world is a machine. I agree with Darwin on a few levels; yes, species change over time. Yes, usually the stronger survive more often than the weaker. Yes, nature does follow a series of governing laws that makes it much like a machine. However, Darwin made a lofty assumption in claiming that because of these things, species were not independently created. This tossing away the idea of a creator and intelligent design disposes the possibility of the existence of a soul independent of the body.

Existence is about surviving. If life really is about “the survival of the fittest,” then what’s so great about life if it’s only about surviving? In your pure survival, is there anything worth living for besides eating, breathing, and producing offspring? According to Darwin, the answer is no. Then what about the mind? The human brain could not have possibly evolved to allow us to think so abstractly about life and purpose and to ponder the existence of God and reality. The theory of evolution would has no purpose for such things.

Darwin’s mechanistic monism has no purpose for anything besides the pure sake of simply being. Darwin claims that the interrelationships between species exclude God; yet science’s exclusion of God cannot disprove His existence. There is no research out there that disproves intelligent design— that disproves God. I love science; biology, chemistry, and math are some of my favorite subjects. When I learn about all the patterns of nature (like natural logarithms), the components of matter, and the universe, I don’t see mindless mechanistic coincidences; I see the direct results of God’s handiwork.

How could evolution have resulted in the tiny wings of gnats, eyelashes, over 1. 4 billion species, emotions, love, and laughter? Darwin was right when he claimed that nature “plainly bear[s] the stamp of far higher workmanship,” but he missed out on appreciating the marvel and wonder of nature because he was too busy trying to figure out its origins. He failed to see that even he himself was made with a unique design in mind that includes a soul and body—and so are you.

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